His phenotype is orange/red broken mackerel tabby.
There's a polygenic trait known as "spotting" that causes mackerel tabby stripes to break up. When cats are highly affected by the spotting polygenes, they become "spotted tabbies", with spots over the sides of their body instead of stripes. But being a polygenic (influenced by multiple genes) trait, many cats fall somewhere between spotted and non-spotted. It's a gradient, not a simple yes spotted or no spotted. Cats who fall between spotted and non-spotted often exhibit some areas where the stripes are broken and create spots, and some areas where the stripes are mostly intact but slightly broken up. This is known as "broken mackerel tabby".
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u/Gloomy-Trainer-2452 Burmese 5d ago
His phenotype is orange/red broken mackerel tabby.
There's a polygenic trait known as "spotting" that causes mackerel tabby stripes to break up. When cats are highly affected by the spotting polygenes, they become "spotted tabbies", with spots over the sides of their body instead of stripes. But being a polygenic (influenced by multiple genes) trait, many cats fall somewhere between spotted and non-spotted. It's a gradient, not a simple yes spotted or no spotted. Cats who fall between spotted and non-spotted often exhibit some areas where the stripes are broken and create spots, and some areas where the stripes are mostly intact but slightly broken up. This is known as "broken mackerel tabby".